Wait, is Phong Shading possible on the Gamecube?

[DeadlyNinja]

I was looking through for some old GC games when I clicked on Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and saw a few images. I know they're the same team responsible for Mario Galaxy, but I never knew Jungle Beat was so good looking! The three screens below really caught my eye. Is that Phong Shading? If not, what are they using to get the shiny look? It works really well for a more cartoony world like Donkey Kong.

I kind of suspected that Galaxy used Phong Shading on some of the non-bumpy surfaces in the game, but I could be wrong.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

1. Phong shading, or at least something pretty close to it, is possible with normal mapping.
AFAIK Phong means that you interpolate the shading normal for every pixel within a polygon; with normal mapping using specular shading, you kinda do the same.

2. The stuff in those images, however, doesn't look like Phong, it's more closer to a simple enviroment map that has various highlights painted into it, used as a reflection. Phong can only give you a circular highlight at a single point, these look different.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

They don't look like they're Gourd Shaded. I think I'm tired of Gourd Shading. Despite the unrealistically plastic/shiny look, I found it quite appealing. Heck, even if it is Gourd Shading, whatever it is that they did with the models really adds a bit to disguise the old look.

 

[vazel]

Yea I first learned about this game a few days ago and was surprised how good looking it was.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

It's a damn good playing game too! A very innovative 2 1/2D platformer from former EAD people. They include people who made Mario Sunshine. Judging by how good this game looks, it's no wonder they were able to make Galaxy look even better. You can see the fur-shading and environment mapping being carried over to Galaxy.

 

[Fafalada]

1. Phong shading, or at least something pretty close to it, is possible with normal mapping.

And it can be done exactly (not just close to it) without any normal maps.

But yes, the screenshots above are very obviously using reflection maps.


To the op, phong shading is possible on GC, but pixel work would be on the expensive side. Just about the only benefit I can think of the top of my head would be small memory savings over other much cheaper methods(on the GC) that produce similar results (the one in screenshots posted being among them).

 

[corysama]

It's an old democoder trick to use a phong falloff texture to approximate the per-pixel phong equation while only doing per-vertex (UV setup) work. It would be easy to pull of on a gamecube. You could even use the dependent texturing to approximate per-pixel normal mapped phong.

It's getting hard to find the old democoder docs that talk about this. Here's the best I could find in 1 minute of googling:
http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/graphics/x_polyp2.htm
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article324.asp

I hope Hugo's page is still around for my grandkids to download through their cranial interfaces.

 

[Sdw]

Yeah, the environment-map-with-painted-highlight has been around for ages! I used it in a PC-demo I coded in 95-96 (software rendering, written in Turbo Pascal+inline assembler), and by then the technique was already widespread. I think the first time I saw it in use was 93 or 94.

 

[Simon F]

They don't look like they're Gourd Shaded.

No, because this is gourd shading:

Gouraud shading, on the other hand, is quite different as well.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

ROFLMAO, that was funneh.

Gourd shading, hehehe

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Ack... I walked right into that one. Dammit, I'll have my revenge!

*grumbles*

 

[fearsomepirate]

Also, phong shading is not about making surfaces look glossy. A lot of games with phong shading will also have other effects to make surfaces look glossy, but it's not the phong shading in particular that does it. A good example is the landscape in Halo. All those mountains and hills are phong shaded, but they're not glossy in the slightest. Phong shading basically does a much better job at hiding polygon joints than Gouraud.